The British hopeful film The King’s Speech failed to live up to its twelve nominations, but picked up the biggest awards of the night to join the dream-drama Inception with four Oscars a piece.
As well as picking up Best Original Screenplay (David Seidler), Best Director (Tom Hooper) and Best Actor (Colin Firth), The King’s Speech also took the top prize of the night, Best Picture.
Inception beat True Grit to the Best Cinematography Oscar, as well as taking three of the more technical categories, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.
Picture editing went to The Social Network, as did the Best Score and Aaron Sorkin’s adapted screenplay.
Black Swan’s only Oscar was for its leading actress, Natalie Portman – maintaining her pattern of success, having won every award from the Golden Globes, through the Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA to the Independent Spirits Award.
The Fighter took a clean sweep of the awards for supporting acting, with Christian Bale and Melissa Leo taking the honours.
One of the surest bets of the night was Toy Story 3 for the Best Animated Feature.
The Foreign Language Oscar followed the Golden Globes in choosing Denmark’s In A Better World over Mexico’s Biutiful.
Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland walked away with two Oscars – for Costume and Art Direction.
Nearly twenty years after collecting his first Oscar for An American Werewolf in London, Rick Baker has repeated the achievement for updating the technique, turning Benicio Del Toro into a werewolf in The Wolfman.
The credit crisis film Inside Job took the Feature Lengthy Documentary prize, while Strangers No More, about a school for refugees in Tel Aviv, won the Oscar for Best Short Documentary.
The Best Live Action short film went to Luke Matheny’s comedy God of Love, while a surreal Australian film The Lost Thing was honoured as the Best Animated Short.